All You Need Is One; Florida Baseball Edges Arkansas 1-0 To Take Series

The Florida baseball team earned its seventh?straight win Saturday night, edging Arkansas 1-0.? The Gators are now 2-0 in SEC play.

It only took one swing in the bottom of the first for the Gators to take an early lead in the game.? Peter Alonso launched a full count fastball to right field that managed to just carry over the fence.? It was the first collegiate homer from the freshman from Tampa, giving Florida an early 1-0 advantage.

Gator coach Kevin O?Sullivan was happy to see Alonso go yard.

?I?m really happy with Peter Alonso getting his first home run as a Gator. I thought (Casey) Turgeon swung the bat really well. (Braden) Mattson got another hit, (Justin) Shafer is seeing the ball better, and (Zack) Powers turned on one and saw it well. Buddy Reed also had two really good at-bats tonight.?

Eric Hanhold proved to be a worthy Saturday night starter for Florida, throwing five scoreless innings in his first start of the year.? The right-handed sophomore from Palm Harbor only allowed two hits on 64 pitches, 37 of which were strikes.? Hanhold is now tied for most wins on the team with three.?

The bullpen took over in the fifth and performed well as it did Friday night. ?Bobby Poyner threw 3.2 innings, allowing no runs on one hit. ?Poyner struck out four before getting pulled with one out left in the game.? Ryan Harris earned the save for the Gators only throwing four pitches.?

?This was Eric Hanhold?s first start of the year. He started with a four-pitch walk to lead off the game, but he made some big pitches in the first inning when he needed to. I thought he was really good; his command will get better as he goes along, but for a first start I thought he was really good. We kept his pitch count relatively where we planned. We planned 70-75 pitches, but he got through five innings with 64 pitches and then they had left, right, left coming up so we ran Bobby Poyner down to the pen to get him going. Bobby was outstanding tonight, as good as it gets. (Ryan) Harris threw the ball really well at the end too.?

Pitching made the only run the Gators got stand up and now Florida goes for the series sweep Sunday with live coverage on ESPN 850 WRUF starting at 12:55pm with Steve Russell and Jeff Cardozo with the call on the Gator IMG Sports Network. ?